The machine that kills secrets is a powerful cryptographic code that hides the identities of leakers and hacktivists as they spill the private files of government agencies and corporations bringing us into a new age of whistle blowing. With unrivaled access to figures like Julian Assange, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, and Jacob Applebaum, investigative journalist Andy Greenberg unveils the group that brought the world WikiLeaks, OpenLeaks, and BalkanLeaks.

Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet

Cypherpunks are activists who advocate the widespread use of strong cryptography (writing in code) as a route to progressive change. Julian Assange, the editor-in-chief of and visionary behind WikiLeaks, has been a leading voice in the cypherpunk movement since its inception in the 1980s. Now, Assange brings together a small group of cutting-edge thinkers and activists from the front line of the battle for cyber-space to discuss whether electronic communications will emancipate or enslave us.

Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Capture Your Data and Control Your World

In Data and Goliath, Schneier reveals the full extent of surveillance, censorship, and propaganda in society today, examining the risks of cybercrime, cyberterrorism, and cyberwar. He shares technological, legal, and social solutions that can help shape a more equal, private, and secure world. This is an audiobook to which everyone with an Internet connection - or bank account or smart device or car, for that matter - needs to listen.

Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World's First Digital Weapon

Top cybersecurity journalist Kim Zetter tells the story behind the virus that sabotaged Iran’s nuclear efforts and shows how its existence has ushered in a new age of warfare - one in which a digital attack can have the same destructive capability as a megaton bomb.

We Are Anonymous: Inside the Hacker World of LulzSec, Anonymous, and the Global Cyber Insurgency

In late 2010, thousands of hacktivists joined a mass digital assault by Anonymous on the websites of VISA, MasterCard, and PayPal to protest their treatment of WikiLeaks. Splinter groups then infiltrated the networks of totalitarian governments in Libya and Tunisia, and an elite team of six people calling themselves LulzSec attacked the FBI, CIA, and Sony. They were flippant and taunting, grabbed headlines, and amassed more than a quarter of a million Twitter followers.

@War: The Rise of the Military-Internet Complex

The United States military currently views cyberspace as the "fifth domain" of warfare - alongside land, sea, air, and space - and the Department of Defense, National Security Agency, and CIA all field teams of hackers who can - and do - launch computer virus strikes against enemy targets. In fact, as @War shows, US hackers were crucial to our victory in Iraq.

Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cybercrime Underground

The word spread through the hacking underground like some unstoppable new virus: Someone - some brilliant, audacious crook - had just staged a hostile takeover of an online criminal network that siphoned billions of dollars from the U.S. economy. The FBI rushed to launch an ambitious undercover operation aimed at tracking down this new kingpin. Other agencies around the world deployed dozens of moles and double agents.

Fatal System Error: The Hunt for the New Crime Lords Who Are Bringing Down the Internet

In this disquieting cyber thriller, Joseph Menn takes readers into the murky hacker underground, traveling the globe from San Francisco to Costa Rica and London to Russia. His guides are California surfer and computer whiz Barrett Lyon and a fearless British high-tech agent. Through these heroes, Menn shows the evolution of cyber-crime from small-time thieving to sophisticated, organized gangs, who began by attacking corporate websites but increasingly steal financial data from consumers.

The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World's Most Wanted Man

It began with a tantalizing, anonymous email: "I am a senior member of the intelligence community." What followed was the most spectacular intelligence breach ever, brought about by one extraordinary man. Edward Snowden was a 29-year-old computer genius working for the National Security Agency when he shocked the world by exposing the near-universal mass surveillance programs of the United States government. His whistleblowing has shaken the leaders of nations worldwide, and generated a passionate public debate on the dangers of global monitoring and the threat to individual privacy.

DarkMarket: Cyberthieves, Cybercops and You

The benefits of living in a digital, globalized society are enormous; so too are the dangers. The world has become a law enforcer’s nightmare and every criminal’s dream. We bank online; shop online; date, learn, work and live online. But have the institutions that keep us safe on the streets learned to protect us in the burgeoning digital world?

Worm: The First Digital World War

Worm: The First Digital World War tells the story of the Conficker worm, a potentially devastating piece of malware that has baffled experts and infected more than twelve million computers worldwide. When Conficker was unleashed in November 2008, cybersecurity experts did not know what to make of it. Exploiting security flaws in Microsoft Windows, it grew at an astonishingly rapid rate, infecting millions of computers around the world within weeks.

Schneier on Security

Presenting invaluable advice from the world's most famous computer security expert, this intensely readable collection features some of the most insightful and informative coverage of the strengths and weaknesses of computer security and the price people pay - figuratively and literally - when security fails. Discussing the issues surrounding things such as airplanes, passports, voting machines, ID cards, cameras, passwords, Internet banking, sporting events, computers, and castles, this book is a must-read for anyone who values security at any level - business, technical, or personal.

The Watchers: The Rise of America's Surveillance State

Our surveillance state was born in the brain of Admiral John Poindexter in 1983. Poindexter, President Ronald Reagan's national security adviser, realized that the United States might have prevented the terrorist massacre of 241 Marines in Beirut if only intelligence agencies had been able to analyze in real time data they had on the attackers. Poindexter poured government know-how and funds into his dream---a system that would sift reams of data for signs of terrorist activity.

Masters of Deception: The Gang That Ruled Cyberspace

From the bedroom terminals of teenagers isolated from their peers by their hyperactive intellects, to the nerve center of a nationwide long-distance phone company infiltrated by a hacker's hand, Masters of Deception offers an unprecedented tour of the murkiest reaches of the electronic frontier and a trenchant, blow-by-blow chronicle of the most notorious gang war in cyberspace.

The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America

In The Shadow Factory, James Bamford, the foremost expert on National Security Agency, charts its transformation since 9/11, as the legendary code breakers turned their ears away from outside enemies, such as the Soviet Union, and inward to enemies whose communications increasingly crisscross America.

LongerILiveLessIKnow says:"Intersection of national security and big data."

No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State

In May 2013, Glenn Greenwald set out for Hong Kong to meet an anonymous source who claimed to have astonishing evidence of pervasive government spying and insisted on communicating only through heavily encrypted channels. That source turned out to be the 29-year-old NSA contractor Edward Snowden, and his revelations about the agency’s widespread, systemic overreach proved to be some of the most explosive and consequential news in recent history, triggering a fierce debate over national security....

The Internet Police: How Crime Went Online and the Cops Followed

Chaos and order clash in this riveting exploration of crime and punishment on the Internet. Once considered a borderless and chaotic virtual landscape, the Internet is now home to the forces of international law and order. It's not just computer hackers and cyber crooks who lurk in the dark corners of the Web - the cops are there, too. In The Internet Police, Ars Technica editor Nate Anderson takes readers on a behind-the-screens tour of landmark cybercrime cases, revealing how criminals continue to find digital and legal loopholes even as police hurry to cinch them closed.

America the Vulnerable: New Technology and the Next Threat to National Security

A former top-level National Security Agency insider goes behind the headlines to explore America's next great battleground: digital security. An urgent wake-up call that identifies our foes; unveils their methods; and charts the dire consequences for government, business, and individuals.

Spam Nation: The Inside Story of Organized Cybercrime - from Global Epidemic to Your Front Door

In Spam Nation, investigative journalist and cybersecurity expert Brian Krebs unmasks the criminal masterminds driving some of the biggest spam and hacker operations targeting Americans and their bank accounts. Tracing the rise, fall, and alarming resurrection of the digital mafia behind the two largest spam pharmacies - and countless viruses, phishing, and spyware attacks - he delivers the first definitive narrative of the global spam problem and its threat to consumers everywhere.

Zero Day: The Threat in Cyberspace

For more than a year, Washington Post reporter Robert O'Harrow has explored the threats proliferating in our digital universe. This audiobook is a compilation of that reporting. With chapters built around real people, including hackers, security researchers, and corporate executives, this book will help regular people, lawmakers, and businesses better understand the mind-bending challenge of keeping the Internet safe from hackers and security breaches - and all-out war.

Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do About It

Richard A. Clarke warned America once before about the havoc terrorism would wreak on our national security-and he was right. Now he warns us of another threat, silent but equally dangerous. Cyber War is a powerful book about technology, government, and military strategy; about criminals, spies, soldiers, and hackers.

Epic Win for Anonymous: How 4chan's Army Conquered the Web

4chan is the "Anti-Facebook", a site that radically encourages anonymity. It spawned the hacktivist group Anonymous, which famously defended WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange by bringing down MasterCard's and Visa's Web sites. Created by a 15-year-old wunderkind in 2003, it is the creative force behind "the Web's most infectious memes and catchphrases" (Wired). Today it has over 12 million monthly users, with enormous social influence to match.

Social Engineering: Hiding in Plain Sight, InfoSec Series

Hiding in Plain Sight will explain my research about this increasing element that allows groups of individuals to steal and often be provided with privileged, personal information. Yet somehow, we are not adequately aware. If we were, I wouldn't hear of devastating financial losses from individuals that are not usually easily fooled. Many refer to much of this fraudulent activity as identity theft, but I believe that there is more going on here than what can be seen on the surface.

Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It

One of the world's leading authorities on global security, Marc Goodman takes listeners deep into the digital underground to expose the alarming ways criminals, corporations, and even countries are using new and emerging technologies against you - and how this makes everyone more vulnerable than ever imagined.

Thinking about Cybersecurity: From Cyber Crime to Cyber Warfare

Cyberspace is the 21st century’s greatest engine of change. Telecommunications, commercial and financial systems, government operations, food production - virtually every aspect of global civilization now depends on interconnected cyber systems to operate; systems that have helped advance medicine, streamline everyday commerce, and so much more.

Publisher's Summary

The machine that kills secrets is a powerful cryptographic code that hides the identities of leakers and hacktivists as they spill the private files of government agencies and corporations bringing us into a new age of whistle blowing. With unrivaled access to figures like Julian Assange, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, and Jacob Applebaum, investigative journalist Andy Greenberg unveils the group that brought the world WikiLeaks, OpenLeaks, and BalkanLeaks.

This powerful technology has been evolving for decades in the hands of hackers and radical activists, from the libertarian enclaves of Northern California to Berlin to the Balkans. And the secret-killing machine continues to evolve beyond WikiLeaks, as a movement of hacktivists aims to obliterate the world's institutional secrecy. Never have the seemingly powerless had so much power to disembowel big corporations and big government.

What the Critics Say

"With complete access to many of the key hackers and leakers, Greenberg delves eloquently into the magicians of the all-powerful technology that shatters the confidentiality of any and all state secrets while tapping into issues of personal privacy." (Publishers Weekly)

If you are all interested in the world of online surveillance, data privacy, and technology to both subvert and protect these, this book is very valuable. Unless you have a technical background things get a little dense at times but the author manages to present all the important issues in the form of a story, a story of a movement dedicated to freedom of information. Highly recommended, especially in the light of recent news stories...

What made the experience of listening to This Machine Kills Secrets the most enjoyable?

This book will get anyone interested in the modern world of secrets and information that can drastically influence where power is kept: the masses or the elite masters. The book covers important events in the secrets arena, from the Pentagon Papers to OpenLeaks.

Powerful topic, well-researched and written, and (uniquely) not much stigma of personal bias. Mr. Greenberg makes sure to lay out the facts first before reacting to them (as evidenced by the descriptions of the feud between Assange and Domscheit-Berg).

If you have not been introduced to the topic then you will see the world with new perspectives afterwards. Both easy-to-absorb and insightful.

Highly-recommended; gripping and informative, non-fiction at its very best!

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